The second wave, IDEX says, consists of larger sensor sizes, driven by usability and security, the decoupling of sensing elements from silicon, which significantly decreases sensor cost, and the integration of digital intelligence into the driver ASIC.

The company noted Mastercard and University of Oxford findings that 93 percent of consumers prefer biometrics to passwords for online payment applications, and 92 percent of banks want to adopt biometrics. It estimates that annual fingerprint sensor shipments will approach 2 billion by 2022, with biometric cards going from a tiny component of the market in 2017 to its largest part.

Mastercard is the global biometric card market’s leading driver, according to IDEX, and Mastercard’s Bob Reany told Biometric Update that IDEX is driving improvements in usability for biometric cards.

Total shipments of biometric cards are expected to grow from 55 million in 2018 to 340 million in 2020. IDEX plans to capture more than a 30 percent share of a market worth between $750 million and $1.5 billion in 2020, with targeted gross margins above 40 percent, according to the presentation.